mentor to me over these years and we talked about that a little bit because he asked me a similar question. what do you think prepared you for this? and to me, the simplest answer is that, it took 37 1/2 years to get me to where -- to where i was. i'm a slow learner, so it took me quite awhile to get there. but, the point is, the ability to fall back on every one of those points, whether you learn through history, reading the book of general horner or general schwarzkopf or reading several of those books. seven years in the united states working, the experience of 9/11, watch i watching the canadian leaders, nato leaders work together, and understanding that at the end of all of this is no matter what, command is how you enter we leaf with other people. a dictator does it by fear. a transformational leader does it by convincing others that it's the right thing to do. having convinced them then it's much easier for them to get on

with it. and that's the approach that i chose. in this arena. so, to me, i don't think there was one seminal point in my career that changed it as much as the asum lags, and it takes time, and it takes experience, but i was blessed -- i had a varied experience. i had some great leaders through my time, both here in the u.s., in canada, and also in europe. and it's the ability to remember it, put it all together and see what works and what doesn't, discard it along the way and remain agile, and you build as you go along. >> general, let me just follow up, and try to connect the last two questions, because i mean, the question before last is critical for current discussions about what's going on in syria, why did russia veto the u.n. security council resolution? some say it was because of being burned on the libya operation

going well beyond what they thought the u.n. resolution allowed. so if you could talk a little bit more about your guidance, what targets you left out, not for ancillary reasons, but for reasons that you thought perhaps it went beyond the mandate. i mean, how did you distinguish between protecting civilians, and sort of hampering the regime that was actually killing the civilians? it's a very fine line, and i mean, your position it would be very difficult, especially with the whole coalition breathing down your neck, working back with nato headquarters, so much political pressure because of the geopolitical implications. could you talk a little bit about that? part of the biggest point was much like -- i like anal jis. i guess it's easier for me to understand things. keep your eyes on the ball. stay focused on the mission itself and clearly you've got to understand that linkage that exists between what is the mission that needs to be done

and what is ancillary to this and what is not related to this. in our case, also, we did not -- we did not engage into regime change. this was not about that at all. it was to stop the violence against people. so -- so if i -- just because a target would -- or we would be aware of certain presence of individuals, or -- but they were not related to the protection of civilians, we did not -- we did not engage. and we have to make sure that, we stayed within the mandate, was this, i don't want to say rigid, it isn't, but this application of power, but yet a very set standards that we've set for ourselves. and we set some very high standards that we want to stay with that. because it was critical, while some nations, some countries have decided whether whether we

were or were not within the mandate is their point, i'mthat the mandate, and to the communications we had with the north atlantic council, it was clear that we were within the mandate. and that's that communication, as well. and explaining what we along the way. and i'm not talking about seeking permission for anything, as much as i'm keeping them informed, taking the right action for the right reason, and then but doing it when it's needed and not doing any of it, and sometimes that's the difficult part. not to do something. it's to opt not to do something, trying to understand what will be the impact of that. we alluded to that where it's courageous restraint. to restrain yourself to that mission and to stick to that objective, and the missions we're given and the effects we wanted to accomplish. regrettably there's no easy solution on that to me, other than analyze and spending a lot of time looking at maps and talk

with your adviser and developing the process together. and this process does not really exist because a lot of the nato processes were based on a different environment. we looked at iraq. we looked at bosnia. we looked at the balkans. we looked at afghanistan. and they said, okay, what is it that i can apply from there, as well, to the concept that -- of protecting those civilians back? but, stay focused on that part, don't stray. don't -- don't take the easy way out. don't stray on it. yes, question in the far back. >> jeremy haass from middle east initiative. i was wondering if you could speak a little bit more on what nato's role was after the fall of tripoli, especially when gadhafi's forces were limited, and the tnc was much more on the offensive than it had been previously. how did nato's role change

during that time, did you guys coordinate with the tnc with regard to protecting civilians? in a more advisory role, as opposed to taking more pragmatic -- or practical actions? i was wondering what your specific role was in that. >> well, even after the fall of tripoli, the threat against civilian population continues. and certain people were still being killed. and banny walid, as i stated before, so the threat continued. but one of the things we discovered is that as the hunter became -- stopped hunting, if you wish, our approach to it, as well, when civilians were not dying, we pulled back. we stopped doing some of the engagement that we did, and we pulled back, and more watch -- overwatched the situation and made sure that nothing could come in to start this situation again. we didn't -- we were not coordinated with the mtc.

our actions were not coordinated with the mtc. it was not in our mandate, and our mandate remained protection of civilians. one thing we made sure was passed was that remember, protecting civilian applies to everybody. so they could turn the table on each other, you will also be accountable for this. and you will act against my mandate of the protection of civilians. so we made sure, also, this was clearly understood. so we did pull back. we weren't as active. we watched the situation develop. and we took action where we thought civilians were in danger, or there were a group preparing to attack civilians. but we're not as active as we were. we took also an overwatch position to look at it. but also ensure that what applied, it applied on both sides, not just one side. >> yes? fred kemp in the front row. >> general, thank you very much for that excellent presentation,

and for joining us at the atlantic council. two related questions. one is, couldn't one argue, and why doesn't one argue, that the ultimate responsibility to protect civilians in a situation where a dictator is leading a regime to kill them is regime change? you seem to be dancing around this. so, so, so is that not part of the responsibility to protect? and how did you interpret that? and what kind of discussions were there about that? related -- were there not a russian and chinese veto at the security council, if that had not come about and you were tasked with the responsibility to protect chore for syria what questions would you be asking from the experience that you've had in libya? >> thank you. the first on the regime change, it's been a discussion all along. but really, what my sense, and

my understanding of the situation was, the world wanted this dictator to stop killing his people. his people wanted democracy, wanted to establish themselves in a different approach, and the world said, your actions of killing your people, woman and children, is not an acceptable point, so stop. there were some exit routes for this regime, if this regime had chose. this regime could have choicen to stop the violence, and sit down. in fact we talked in the early days of creating an environment for diplomacy, and dialogue to take place. so that we can find a way out of this. without having to resort to kinetic actions. so there were some movement available and room to maneuver. but the regime insisted upon the last possible moment to inflict casualties. i think the regime misunderstood the situation, misread the situation completely and thought

they were still winning. i think some of their own processes and intelligence network may not have been as strong and i don't think people were telling gadhafi himself the truth in many ways so he continued until the end. and it's regrettable. because, at the end of the day, the mission was to stop the violence. so, i understand what you're saying. and i guess you could paraphrase it by saying, you know, regime collapse, if necessary, but not necessarily regime collapse in terms of accomplishing the effects that we set to do. regards to a potential -- a new environment, from my perspective, as i look at it, the various aspect of it that i would consider, and the first one, of course, is we found our international legitimacy through the u.n., the united nations security council. and i think it's important to have this international

legitimacy that says the world does not agree,agreent, this bet stop. obviously it finds its root in the u.n., as it is. but it's not necessarily the u.n. each country as a sovereign nation has the right to take action, as they deem appropriate, to stop what it believes is an event that must take place, a breech in international law, and law of armed conflicts, for example. but i'm leading to my second point, which is if we give this international legitimacy and accept the nations of the world do not -- do not belief that the actions of one should continue then we must find a group that will do it. who will you task, who will take the lead to bring an end to this through either kinetic or non-kinetic methods. and military methods. in this case, nato is, as a place that offers that.

outside nato, if not nato, then what? well, we've seen the coalition led by the u.s., where the u.s. has taken the lead, but i think the alliance offers you a different -- a different solution. it offers a solution where, as i said, we can share risk and share responsibilities more equally. i think secretary gates, and secretary panetta and indeed secretary clinton have both talked about being more inclusive and increasing everybody's participation, and burden sharing, improving an increasing burden sharing. but -- and to do that for 28 nations in nato, i think, international legitimacy is probably a requirement to bring those 28 nations together. it's either that or a sufficiently heinous act that will trigger 28 nations. and partners, to do that.

so, legitimacy, nato, and how can you get nato to operate together? but i talked about also in partners, because then regional, regional balance, i think, or regional support is important. in a case of libya, we had three arab nations, sweden joined us, and we had, of course, the nato nations. surrounding it, there were some these are all aspects. and the final point, very early in the campaign and in the process, the world, the u.n. recognized the tnc as the

legitimate authority in libya. do we have such recognition of -- of a new leadership, of a country, that exists in syria? and i'm not sure if it's in place yet. so there are various factors that i think each of them has to be considered, and also dare i say the point is that where we did this mission, and pleem say, well, you did it without nato boots on the ground, could we do the same somewhere else? well i think the military commander will do his estimate, military commander will do his estimate and it will likely be, it will be a different outcome. it will be a different force structure. and these days, it will be an acceptable force structure to do this. or is diplomacy the way to solve this problem? so there are various factors which i offer to you that i would certainly consider and each of these needs to be looked

at in depth and understanding, and i think we need to look also at our own internal, we the nato nation, our own internal financial situation, political situations, which will force various decision making. the difficult part is acknowledging that our people suffering but what is the cost, what is the risk associated, and will you reach a tactical solution that is strategic which will trigger a strategic failure? in the case of libya we were able to acknowledge both strategic and tactical objective and success, but would a direct engagement from syria cause the same? and i'm not advocating either way. i'm just saying, these are all factors that we must carefully analyze before a final decision is made. >> excellent answer to a very difficult question. that we're all struggling with. we appreciate it. any questions from the audience

before i ask my fourth question? yes, in the back. >> thank you, general bouchard. how are you? >> good. >> good to see you. the -- you have talked at great length about the even-handedness of the nato forces in the protection of civilians. could you address the issue of even-handedness in terms of the arms embargo? because, we seem, at least post facto, to have evidence that some coalition members, some nato members were involved in the provision of weapons to opposition forces during the conflict. >> kif sult situation. difficult question. and really, when you look at it, the nato mission was task, and we continued with

that. but, in many ways parallel to whatever nato will be doing, nations have got their own rights to do certain actions that may not necessarily be shared with the alliance itself. and various nations will decide that. it's their sovereign right to take certain decisions as they go in. from our perspective, we enforced the embargo with the knowledge that we have and the information that was given to us. and from there, we accepted information that was given to us that would either enable safe passage, or allow safe passage as each nation would provide us -- would provide us with the information. i think also the essence of it was to make sure that the -- i think it's a two-way street, no more weapons were coming in that would end up in the hands of regime forces, that would end up killing civilians, so you go back again to linkages, to protecting the population. and the other part was to

ensuring, were it all hese weap not finding their way out in to another theater somewhere, nor remember though that this was an air and maritime embargo, not an embargo on the land area. which we could not -- we didn't have the force structure to cover. so, again, it's a balance here, and -- but again, the linkage has to go back to, against the population, civilian population, and this is what we use as a bench mark. >> yes? >> general, how do you handle the daily requirements of public affairs? >> pretty easy. tell the truth. tell the facts. and stick to it. the one thing right from the beginning, a saw moussa ibrahim,

for example, on the regime side give his of the story and their side of the story was given. for us we would not get into this tit for tat or they said this and we don't agree with it, our view was to publish, or to provide a report on our daily activity, provide the information that we had, stick to the fact, and do not make any judgment on anybody else. i believe it's important that point was important to us. so we stuck to the message. it was important also, we understood, that the world was listening. the libyans were listening. the regime forces was listening. so what were those key messages that were important to make sure that we reassured some that we would try to have others understand that their activity was immoral and illegal and unethical and that we would not stand for that and we would continue to protect the population. so the key messaging were very

much factual, and our activities were factual. and if and explain that, as well. don't try to hide it. just stand up and face the fact. for nato, for our mission, every activity, every bomb, or every naval activity did not have a national flag on it. it was a nato event. it was a nato mission. and we provided that information to people. i think that eventually i tell people that, you know, your credibility in front of the media is all you've got. and if you lose that credibility, it's once lost very difficult to find again. so, let's work at not losing it. and the best way not to lose it is stick to the facts. tell the truth. and then move on with that. and very -- probably oversimplified a very complex issue. that to me was the approach that we took.

>> general if i could follow up, i was taken by your comment in your remarks that 50% of the campaign was strategic communications. so, a couple of sort of related follow-up questions. did you have a strategic communications campaign plan that sort of struck certain themes, as events unfolded? and so in addition to just sort of hitting on the facts, was there sort of an arc of your story that you wanted to make sure got out so that, as you said, you win the hearts and minds of the libyan people from the very beginning and don't have to fight an uphill battle? >> well, it was important for us, for the people of libya to understand, clearly we were there, and we were there to protect civilians. and we would work hard at that and we did that. there was also, we wanted to make it clear to others that what they were doing was not acceptable to the world. and their acceptable, and, in fact, if we could convince some to put their weapons down and walk out, which we did.

we had several defections. in various places in the country. and these defections were not covered that widely by the media, but for us, we saw those defections take place, which was feedback that -- because by and large i do believe that by and large the libyan regime forces did not want to kill civilians. they didn't want to kill other libyans. but, they're stuck between having to do this -- this act, or be killed yourself, because many were killed. and then the other angle was, the mercenaries themselves, because they do it for different reasons. and also it's important that the world knew what we were doing, clearly understood what we were doing, and because after all, those 2 nations and the people and the governments of those 28 nations are those people that we were at can be to through the north atlantic council. so it's -- the message ing is

important, is what are those key messages? and do you pass them to the right audiences, and work together? and obviously, the solution of choice is to accomplish this if you can do it without dropping one bomb, the better you will be. but also understanding diplomacy took place and each nation also was running its own diplomatic campaign on various elements, as well, and on the standing. >> thank you. other questions? we have time for one more. yes. >> george benito senior fellow at the atlantic council. recently at nato's meeting of defense ministers, panetta and rasmussen both highlighted nato's response force as one of nato's key answers to the age of austerity and how nato can do more with less, how it can protect key nato capabilities from defense cuts. however, in nato's largest

mission, afghanistan, nato's response force was not used. in nato's most recent mission, libya, nato's response force was not used. as commander of one of the most successful operations in nato's history, is nato's response force a luxury vehicle that will never leave the garage and will never be driven? or under what circumstances will nato's response force be used, what type of missions will it justify the investment of resources if it is received? >> probably the first answer is the easiest one. the second one is a little more complicat complicated. but still both of them, is nato response force a luxury vehicle? i don't think so. before being tasked with this operation, in fact, i spent a year training with the nato response forces. in fact, i was appointed as the commander for training of the nato response force. so, we worked together, and

developed relationships, and we raised the quality and the ability of each of these -- these groups of people, and these components to work together. the air component for the mission was also the air component for the nato response force. so they were trained ready to go, and we worked that. whether it's used in whole or in part, becomes a political issue. because each nation will again decide whether their forces will be used in the matter in which nato will authorize us to do. so to me it's not whether we use the whole thi, the force that we have is an able force, it's a trained force, it's a ready force, and whether it can be used in whole or in part to create a workable organization. so there is value on both end of

it, and as far as the last point, though, when what will be the trigger or what will be the conditions under which the nrf would be used, well i would think first of all, the nations will decide that. i would think that article 5 would probably be the guiding factor into the deployment of the nato response force because that's what it was created for. anything beyond that, then we'll have to have a political directions from the mac and to the mac in a decision to engage in whole or in part the force. but at the end of the day, many of the folks that came in were actually trained during the nato response force training phase and certification. and i think certainly was no waste of time because these folks would come back and be ready to operate. >> well, general, i think we're out of time on behalf of the atlantic council, thank you very much for your remarks here.

you've a very important story to tell that is directly relevant to our ongoing debates and we just thank you for choicing the atlantic council to begin to tell your story. so thank you very much. a look at c-span3's prime-time schedule tonight with the president sending his 2013 budget request to congress earlier this week, we'll lead off with several hearings, breaking down the numbers. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, u.s. army secretary john mccue and chief of staff ray odierno testifying before congress on the army's

budget. then at about 10:20 the white house acting budget director appears before the house budget committee to discuss the $3.8 trillion budget. and later on ed gillespie the former counselor for president george w. bush speaks at the hispanic leadership network conference. >> in 1966, julian bond was prevented from taking his elected seat in the georgia state house, after state representatives voted 184-12 not to seat him due to his stance against the vietnam war. his appeal went to the u.s. supreme court. >> i went to the court to hear the argument, and i was sitting in the court, just behind the bar with the lawyers in front of me, and i was sitting next to my lawyer's partner, victor robinowitz and the attorney general of georgia was making an argument that georgia had a right to throw me out because i said things that were treasonous and sad ishs. and i think it was judge white said to him, he said, is this

all you have? he said, you come all the way up here and this is all you have? so i said to rabinowitz, we're winning, aren't we? >> discover more during black history month on american history tv on c-span3 and online at the c-span video library. search and share from over 25 years of c-span programming. at c-span.org/videolibrary. before taking off for their president's week recess the house and senate extended the payroll tax cut until the end of the year. the bill also includes long-term unemployment aid and medicare payments to doctors. this morning, before final votes we spoke with vermont representative peter welch for about half an hour about the deal struck between the house and senate negotiators. >> we're very happy to have congressman welch with us this morning, democrat at large from vermont. and i wanted to start here, with